GOLDEN UNICORN RESTAURANT!

Address: 18 E. Broadway, New York, NY 10002

HONOREES

ERNEST ABUBA

ERNEST ABUBA is a playwright, director, and veteran Broadway and film actor. Last seen in The Oldest Boy at Lincoln Center. Broadway: Pacific Overtures, Loose Ends, Shimada, and Zoya’s Apartment; National Tour: The King and I. His plays produced by Pan Asian Rep include: Kwatz! The Tibetan Project, Cambodia Agonistes, Eat a Bowl of Tea, An American Story, and Dojoji: the Man Inside the Bell. Leir Rex, Papa Boy, and Nightstalker (La MaMa E.T.C.). He was a founding Board Member of Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, Chen Dance Center, and the Basement Workshop in Chinatown, and served as the Director of the Asian American Theatre Collective Unit at the Henry Street Settlement with Fay Chiang and Mary Lum. TV: New York Undercover, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Counterstrike, Vestige of Honor,and Adderly. Film: Twelve Monkeys, New York News, King of New York, and Call Me. Screenplays: Mariana Bracetti, Osceola, Arthur A. Schomburg, Lilac Chen – Asian American Suffragette, Asian American Railroad Strike, and Iroquois Confederacy (Wing Lum Productions and CBS/PBS). Recipient of an Obie, Rockefeller Playwright Residency, five NYSCA Grants for Playwriting and Directing, and Creative Arts Public Service (CAPS) Grant. He is a Senior Theatre faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College.

CHERYL IKEMIYA

CHERYL IKEMIYA was the senior program officer for the arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF). She worked together with the Arts Program staff to plan, implement, review and evaluate its strategy and programs. She was involved in developing multiple programs for the theatre community, including DDCF’s Leading National Theatre and Theatre Commissioning and Production programs; Theatre Communications Group’s New Generations and Audience (R)Evolution programs; and DDCF’s support for organizations such as the Consortium of Asian American Theatres and Artists, Latino Theatre Commons, Network of Ensemble Theatres, among others.

Cheryl was formerly the assistant director of the Performing Arts Program at the Japan Society, Inc. in New York City. She serves on the board at the New York Buddhist Church, where as an ordained Buddhist priest she is an assistant minister, and has volunteered in pastoral care at Beth Israel Hospital. She is a past chair of New York Grantmakers in the Arts and currently a mentor in Philanthropy New York’s Young Leaders Breakfast Club.

GEORGE FISCHOFF

In Memoriam, Composer GEORGE FISCHOFF was born in South Bend, Indiana and came to New York City as a teenager on a full scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music. After graduation with top honors from Juilliard, he decided to pursue a career as a composer. His most notable songs, “98.6” and “Lazy Day”, both charted on Billboard’s Hot 100 and continue to receive airplay all over the world. Later in life he decided to become a musical playwright and created a one man show named Gauguin/Savage Light, which ran for over 7 years at various studios in Manhattan. Mr. Fischoff is the composer of the gorgeous score to James Michener’s Sayonara, which Pan Asian produced in 2015.